SOLITARY CONFINEMENTHistory & Hauntings of Eastern State Penitentiary and
Behind the Scenes of the TLC Filming

America's Ghost Hunters
Premieres October 30 on TLC!

When compiling a list
of places in America where Ghosts are Most Frequently found, prisons and
jails are high on the list. The amount of trauma, pain and terror
experience by men who are incarcerated often leaves a lasting impression
behind. The horrible events that occur in some of these places cause the
spirit of the men who lived and died here to linger behind as well.
Jails and prisons can be terrifying places -- for those in this world
and the next!

BY
TROY TAYLOR

I. AMERICAN PENITENTIARY
One of the first institutions brought to the New World by the early settlers
was the jail, a place where lawbreakers could be held while they awaited trial
and subsequent punishment. There were more than 150 offenses in those days for
which the punishment was death and for the rest, there was whipping, branding,
beatings or public humiliation. At that time, the jail was not a place where
criminals were kept for punishment. In fact, the idea of a prison was a purely
American institution that would have a profound effect on both this
country and around the world.

The first state prison was the notorious Newgate,
established in Connecticut in 1773. It was actually an abandoned copper mine
where prisoners were chained together and forced into hard labor about 50 feet
underground. Newgate became the first "hell hole" of American prisons, but it
would not be the last. Almost immediately, social reformers appeared, but it
has been questioned whether or not their efforts to achieve humane treatment
helped or harmed the prisoners. The first reform was attempted in 1790 at
Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail. It was renovated by the Quakers for the
jail was described as being a scene of "universal riot and debauchery.. with
no separation of those accused but yet untried... from convicts sentenced for
the foulest crimes."

The jail was remodeled in 1790 and for the first time, men
and women were housed separately in large, clean rooms. Debtors were placed in
another part of the jail from those being held for serious offenses and
children were removed from the jail entirely. Hardened offenders were placed
in solitary confinement in a "penitentiary house" and prisoners were given
work and religious instruction. Within a short time though, the Walnut Street
jail became overcrowded and a new institution had to be constructed.

Around this same time, two new prisons were built and would
soon become models for the rest of the nation. Eastern Penitentiary was built
in Philadelphia in 1829 to further the Quaker’s idea of prisoner isolation as
a form of punishment. Prisoners were confined in windowless rooms with running
water and toilets. They would come into contact with no living persons, save
for an occasional guard or a minister who would come to pray with them and
offer spiritual advice. This extreme isolation caused many of the prisoners to
go insane and it comes as no surprise that the prison is believed to be
haunted today. Also in 1829, a rival system, which gained wider acceptance,
was started with the building of a prison in Auburn, New York. Here, the
prisoners worked together all day at hard labor and then were isolated at
night, as they were at the Eastern Penitentiary.

Even though they worked together, inmates were forbidden to
talk to one another and were forced to march from place to place in the prison
with their eyes always directed downward. The warden of the prison was Elam
Lynds, who believed the purpose of the system was to break the spirit of the
prisoners. He personally whipped the men and urged the guards to treat the
prisoners with brutality and contempt. One standard punishment was the "water
cure", which consisted of fastening a prisoner’s neck with an iron yoke and
then pouring an ice-cold stream of water onto his head. At other times, the
man would be chained to a wall and then the water would be turned on him
through a high-pressure hose. While the pain was unbearable, it left no marks.

The Auburn system began to be adopted throughout America
because it was much cheaper to operate than the Pennsylvania system. The cells
were much smaller and money was to be made from the inmate labor. And as the
system spread, the treatment of the prisoner became even more imaginative. The
striped uniform was first introduced at Sing Sing and floggings, the sweatbox,
the straitjackets, the iron yoke, the thumb screws and the stretcher became
widely used. The "stretcher" had a number of variations. A man might be
handcuffed to the top of the bars of his cell so that his feet barely touched
the floor, then left that way all day -- or his feet might be chained the
floor and his wrists tied to a pulley on the ceiling. When the rope was
pulled, the prisoner was stretched taut. "Sweatboxes" were metal chambers that
were so small that the prisoner literally had to crawl inside. They might be
left in such confinement all day and in some cases, the boxes were moved close
to a furnace so that the heat inside of them would be intensified.

The Auburn system was based on cruelty and repression, with
the idea that such treatment would reform prisoners and make them change their
ways. Instead, it was a failure and led to riots, death and the closure of
many of the institutions. Unfortunately, many of the practices have been
adopted (in some degree) by modern prisons.

After the Civil War, new ideas began to be experimented
with. In 1870, men like Enoch Cobbs Wines, and others who formed the American
Prison Association, started the reformatory system. The Elmira Reformatory,
the first of the new type, opened in New York in 1876. Although the
reformatory plan was originally intended for all ages, prisoners at Elmira
were limited to between the ages of 16 and 30. The principle of the plan was
reformation, rather than punishment and was hailed as a great advance in
humane treatment of prisoners. By 1900, 11 states had adopted the reformatory
system but by 1910, the plan was considered dead. Most guards and wardens were
incapable of administering the grading program and fell back on favoritism
rather than reformation. Because of this, many of the men who were paroled,
and were allegedly "reformed", went right back out and committed new crimes.
Today, many prisons are still called by the name of "reformatory" but are
merely a part of the general prison system.

Despite some of the claims, there has been little advance
in prisons since the introduction of the system in 1829, although thanks to
reform wardens like Thomas Mott Osborne and Lewis E. Lawes, much of the
outright cruelty and squalor of the earlier prisons has been considerably
reduced. Still, many of the extreme punitive concepts have persisted, as
evidenced by the 1930’s "super prison" of Alcatraz. This prison, called by
some the "American Devil’s Island", was the worst of the federal prisons and
was said to be escape proof. According to some estimates, almost 60 percent of
the inmates went stir crazy there. Alcatraz left an extreme mark on the
prisoners and on the guards and staff members as well. It soon lost its
original purpose of confinement for escape artists and troublemakers and
became a place to put inmates who it was deemed deserved harsher treatment,
like Al Capone. By 1963, Alcatraz was shut down, having proven to be a
failure.

And some would consider the entire American prison system a
failure as well. Many critics have charged that the prisons have failed to
reform criminals or even to act as a deterrent to crime. Eventually, prisoners
are simply released, mostly due to a lack of space, and they go right back out
and commit new crimes. Many of the prisons themselves have returned to the
status of "hell holes" as well. The brutal conditions often lead to permanent
injury, insanity, trauma and death. Is it any wonder that prisons and jails
have become known as such haunted places?

2. EASTERN STATE PENITENTIARY After the changes at the Walnut Street Jail in 1790, the
Quakers of Philadelphia began to search for a new method of incarceration for
criminals in which "penitence" would become essential in the punishment of the
lawbreaker. (Thus, we have the word "penitentiary"). The Quaker’s concept of
such incarceration would involve solitary confinement, a method already
popular in Europe with members of monastic orders. It was believed that if
monks could achieve peace through solitary confinement and silence, then
criminals could eventually be reformed using the same methods. After
years of overcrowding at the Walnut Street jail, a new prison was proposed
within the city limits of Philadelphia.

Called Eastern State Penitentiary, it was be designed to
hold 250 prisoners in total 250 prisoners in total solitary confinement and
opened in 1829. An architect named John Haviland was hired and he set to work
creating an institution in the popular "hub and spoke" design. It had been
used in prisons throughout Europe and was highly effective, allowing for a
constant surveillance of the prison from a central rotunda. The original
design called for seven cell blocks to radiate outward from the center house
and guard post.

Prisoners were confined in
windowless rooms that were small, but were equipped with both running
water and toilets. This was an amazing innovation for the time period as
very few public or private buildings were equipped with indoor facilities.
Of course, the reason for this was not for the comfort of the prisoner but
to keep him out of contact with other people. The walls were thick and
soundproof, so prisoners never saw each other. Each prisoner was also
given his own exercise yard, surrounded by a brick wall, furthering the
sense of extreme isolation. They would see no other inmate from the time
they entered the prison until the time they were released.

Construction began on the
prison in May 1822. The site selected for it was an elevated area that had
once been a cherry orchard. Because of this, the prison later acquired the
nickname of Cherry Hill. As construction began, changes forced John
Haviland to create new designs so that the prison could hold an addition
200 prisoners. At that time, the prison was the most expensive single
structure ever built but Haviland’s design would become so popular that it
would be copied for nearly 300 institutions around the world.

Although the prison would
not be completed until 1836, it began accepting prisoners in 1829. The
first inmate was Charles Williams, who was sentenced to two years for
burglary. Like all of the other prisoners who would be incarcerated here,
Williams was stripped of his clothing, measured, weighed and given a
physical examination. He was also given a number and was not referred to
by his name until the day that he was released. A record was made of his
height, weight, age, place of birth, age, complexion, color of hair and
eyes, length of feet and if he was able to write, the prisoner placed his
name on the record.

An Early print
showing the “hub and spoke” method of design for the prison. In this way,
guards could patrol the penitentiary from a central location.

A floor plan of Eastern State
that was created in 1836. The prison had already started to grow and would
see more additions over the next century.

After the prisoner was examined, he was given a pair of
wool trousers, a jacket with a number sewn on it, two handkerchiefs, two pairs
of socks and a pair of shoes. Then, a mask that resembled a burlap bag was
placed over his head so that he would not be able to see the prison as he was
taken to his cells. It was believed that if an inmate were unable to see which
direction to go if he slipped out of his cell, it would be harder for him to
escape. The masks were eventually discontinued in 1903.

The small cell doors remain intact
today.

After that, he was taken
to his cell. As he entered it, he would be forced to stoop down (as a
penitent would) because the doorways were shortened to remind the
prisoners of humility. Above him would be the only lighting in the cell, a
narrow window in the ceiling that was called the "Eye of God".

Silence had to be
maintained at Eastern State at all times. The guards even wore socks over
their shoes while they made their rounds. By doing this, they moved in
secret around the prison and while the inmates could not hear them, the
officers could hear any sounds coming from inside of the cells. The
prisoners were not allowed any sort of books or reading material and could
not communicate with anyone in any way. If they were caught whistling,
singing or talking (even to themselves), they were deprived of dinner or
were taken to one of the punishment cells. Any prisoners who repeatedly
broke the rules were taken to a punishment cell and were restricted to a
half-ration of bread and water.

Even though communication
was forbidden, most of the prisoners attempted it anyway. The easiest way
to do this was to attach a note to a small rock and toss it over the wall
into the next exercise yard. It was probably the quietest form of
communication and the most popular. Other forms of contact ranged from
coded tapping on the walls to whistling softly and even muffled speech.
Since there were vents for heat in every cell, a limited amount of contact
could be made through the ducts. They could also tap on the vents and be
heard by several prisoners at once. However, if they were caught, they
knew with certainty that they would be punished.

At first, punishment at
Eastern State was mild compared to other institutions. Most prisons used
the lash, a leather strap that was administered to the back, but officials
at Eastern State believed that solitary confinement in the 8 x 12 stone
cells was punishment enough. However, as the prisoners began to repeatedly
break the rules, the punishments became more intense -- going far beyond
the plans that had been conceived by the Quakers. The most common forms of
punishment created by the prison staff became the Straitjacket, the Iron
Gag, the Water Bath and the Mad Chair.

This recreated cell shows what the cells liked like in the early days of
the penitentiary.

The straitjacket was commonly used by mental institutions
to restrain crazed patients and to keep them from hurting themselves or
others. At Eastern State, the jacket was used in a different way. Inmates
would be bound into the jacket and soon their face, hands and neck would
become numb. Eventually, they would turn black from a lack of blood flow and
the inmate would usually pass out. The use of the straitjacket was finally
discontinued around 1850.

The straitjacket

The Water Bath

The dreaded Iron Gag

The Mad Chair was another
form of punishment, or restraint, adapted again from mental asylums. Here,
the prisoner would be tied to the chair by chains and leather straps and
held so firmly that he was unable to move at all. After long periods of
time, his limbs would become very painful and swollen. The offending
prisoners would often find themselves strapped into the chairs, unable to
move a muscle, for periods of time befitting their punishments. These
periods could last anywhere from a few hours to days. Prisoners who spent
any length of time in the chair would find themselves unable to walk for
hours (or even days) afterward. Their limbs were often a bluish-black
color, caused by the lack of circulation, and it could take a week or more
before they returned to their normal color.

The Water Bath was another
punishment that was adapted from "treatments" at mental hospitals at the
time. It involved either dunking, or drenching, a prisoner in ice cold
water and then hoisting them up in chains to spend the night attached to
the wall. This punishment was especially popular with the more brutal
guards during the winter months, when the water would freeze onto the
inmates skin.

The Iron Gag was the most
commonly used punishment -- and the one most feared by the prisoners. It
was a device that was placed over the inmate’s tongue while his hands were
crossed and tied behind his neck. His arms were then pulled taut and the
hands secured just behind the man’s neck. The gag was then attached to his
tongue and his hands and locked in place. Any movement of the hands would
tear at the gag and cause intense pain. The inmate’s mouth would be bloody
and sore by the time he was released from their bonds.

As mentioned previously,
such measures had not been devised as part of the system of penitence,
created by the Quakers. They had been improvised by the guards and by
officials at the prison, who incidentally were already been investigated
by the state for questionable financial dealings in 1834, two years before
the prison was officially completed. Later that same year, the prison
would be investigated (for the first time) for inhumane treatment of
prisoners. Investigations continued over the years and revealed chilling
and horrific punishments that had not been conceived of by even the early
guards. For example, Block 13, which was constructed in 1925, contained
especially small cells that had no light and no ventilation. Prisoners who
broke the rules were incarcerated in these cells but when they were
discovered by inspectors years later, authorities were ordered to tear
down the walls between them and make them larger chambers. Another dark
discovery was made when inspectors uncovered "the Hole" under Block 14.

It was a pit that had been dug under the cell block that
was reserved for especially troublesome inmates. They were often kept for
weeks in this black, rectangle of earth, chasing away rats and vermin and
subsisting on only one cup of water and one slice of bread each day.

While punishments and
seclusion were undoubtedly hard on the health of the prisoners, the
diseases within the prison were even worse. During the first few years of
the prison, poor planning caused the odor of human waste to constantly
invade every part of the building. This was caused by the design of the
vents and by the plumbing and heating methods that were used. Water was
supplied to every cell for the toilets and for the running water. Since
the prisoners were only permitted to bathe every three weeks, they were
forced to wash themselves in the basins inside of their cells. To heat the
water and the rest of the prison, coal stoves were placed in tunnels
underneath the floors. Since the sewer pipes from the toilets ran
alongside the pipes for the fresh water, the coal stoves also heated the
waste pipes. Because of this, the prison always smelled like human waste.
The problem was finally corrected in later years because of the frequency
of illnesses among the prisoners and the guards.

A largely intact cell (likely dated
circa 1960’s) that was found in an area of the prison closed to the
general public today.

But most damaged of all was the mental health of the
inmates. The inmates at Eastern State often went insane because of the
isolated conditions and so many cases were reported that eventually the prison
doctors began to invent other reasons for the outbreaks of mental illness. It
was believed at that time that excessive masturbation could cause insanity.
Because of this, the doctor’s log book of the period listed many cases of
insanity, always with masturbation as the cause. It was also noted that many
of the men went insane because of their genes and these two diagnoses remained
popular throughout the 1800’s. It was never documented that the total
isolation caused any of the men’s breakdowns.

Without question though, being imprisoned at Eastern was
mind numbing. The prisoner was required to remain in his cell all day and all
night in solitary confinement, thinking of nothing but their crimes. The
system was brutal on the inmates but hard for the warden and guards as well.
The first warden at Eastern was Samuel Wood and it was up to him to insure
that the punishment of total solitary confinement was carried out. He and his
family were required to reside on the premises of the prison and were not
allowed to leave for periods of more than 18 hours without permission from the
prison commission.

One of the biggest problems in the early days at Eastern
was keeping the guards sober. It was so boring making the rounds and
maintaining total silence that the guards often drank to combat the monotony.
At one point, the guards were even given a ration of alcohol during the
workday so that they would not drink too much. However, few of them remained
sober so the prison commission eventually passed a rule that threatened anyone
found drunk on the job with immediate termination.

Eventually, Eastern State
Penitentiary became the most famous prison in America and tourists came
from all over the country to see it. Some sightseers traveled from even
further abroad. Perhaps the most famous Eastern tourist was the author
Charles Dickens. He came to the prison during his five-month tour of
America in 1842 and named it as one of his essential destinations, right
after Niagara Falls. Although he came to the prison with the best of
intentions, he really did not believe the officials knew what damage the
isolation was doing to the minds of the prisoners. He later wrote about
his trip to the prison in 1845 and stated that "the system here is rigid,
strict, and hopeless solitary confinement... I believe it, in its effects,
to be cruel and wrong." He went on to write about the inhumane treatment
of the inmates and after speaking to many of them, came to believe that
the solitary conditions were a "torturing of the mind that is much worse
that any physical punishment that can be administered."

Dickens wrote about a number of the prisoners that he
encountered during his visit, including a man who had turned every inch of the
interior of his cell into a breathtaking mural. Dickens was stunned when he
saw it and exclaimed that it was one of the most amazing works of art that he
had ever seen. He tried to speak to the man who had created it but was shocked
when he realized that the prisoner’s eyes and expression were totally blank.
Although he did not rant, rave or weep hysterically, Dickens knew that the man
had gone totally insane.

And this man was just one of the thousands who were
incarcerated at the prison during its years of silence. The loneliness, misery
and solitude drove many of them to madness. The conditions of the place drove
many of the inmates over the brink, leaving little doubt as to why insanity
and escape attempts were a major problem at Eastern State Penitentiary
throughout the 1800’s and beyond.

Although it wasn’t easy for a prisoner to escape, there
were many that tried. The only way to get out was to scale the wall of the
exercise yard and then make to the high wall or the front gate. This had to be
done without attracting the attention of the guards and with the added
disadvantage of not knowing the prison layout. Each of the inmates had brought
into the prison and then marched to their cells with hoods over their heads so
that they could not see their surroundings. In spite of this, the first escape
came in 1832. Prisoner number 94, a prison baker named William Hamilton, was
serving dinner in the warden’s apartment. The warden stepped out of the room
for a moment and Hamilton managed to tie several sheets together and lower
himself out the window. He was not caught until 1837 and when he was, he was
returned to his old cell.

There were other escapes as well, but the most memorable
came in 1926. Eight prisoners took turns tunneling under cells 24 and 25. They
went down about eight feet and then started digging toward the outer wall. The
tunnel had been extended nearly 35 feet before they were caught. A similar
tunnel actually succeeded in making it out of the prison in April 1945. A
group of prisoners, using wood from the prison shop for reinforcement, managed
to dig a shaft under the prison and beyond the wall. After it was completed,
the men went out at slightly different times to avoid being noticed. By the
time they all reached the tunnel’s exit, the guards had realized they were
missing and the last two were caught climbing out of the tunnel. The others
were apprehended a few blocks away.

The method of total solitary confinement was finally
abandoned in the 1870’s. It was largely considered a failure in that it was
too expensive to manage and had shown little in the way of results. It was
decided that Eastern State would become a regular prison. From this point on,
being sent to solitary confinement was a punishment and no longer the accepted
norm at the prison. The prisoners were no longer confined to their cells only
and a dining hall and athletic field were built. Since the prisoners no longer
needed the individual exercise yards, the areas were converted into cells to
help with the overcrowding that was starting to affect the prison. Between
1900 and 1908, many of the original cells were also renovated and what had
once been a small chamber for one man, became close quarters for as many as
five. Along with these changes came new cell blocks, a wood shop, a new boiler
room and other buildings where the prisoners could labor. There were also art
and educational programs added as the prison system began to try and
rehabilitate the inmates rather than merely punish them. The work done by the
inmates also helped both the prisoners and the prison itself. No work was
contracted out and the goods that were made in the shops were sold and the
proceeds helped to pay for the prison’s expenses for many years.

In 1924, Eastern State saw what must have been the most
unusual inmate ever incarcerated in the penitentiary during the entire history
of the institution. According to prison lore, Pennsylvania Governor Gifford
Pinchot allegedly sentenced Pep "The Cat-Murdering Dog" to a life sentence at
Eastern State in August of that year. Pep allegedly murdered the governor’s
wife’s cherished cat. Prison records reflect that Pep was assigned an inmate
number (no. C2559), which is seen in his mug shot at left. However, the reason
for Pep’s incarceration remains a subject of some debate. A newspaper article
reported that the governor donated his own dog to the prison to increase
inmate morale and the story of the "cat murder" was concocted as a humorous
publicity story.

During the early years of the Twentieth Century, the first
rumors of ghosts began to circulate at the prison. The walls of the place had
an almost tangible oppressiveness about them and it was not hard to believe
that the generations of prisoners who had lived, died and lost their sanity
within the penitentiary could still be lingering behind. However, the first
real ghost story of Eastern State surrounded not the prison itself but perhaps
the most famous (or infamous) prisoner to ever be incarcerated here -- Al
Capone.

Following the bloody
events of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, Capone slipped out
of town in May 1929 to avoid the heat that was still coming down from the
massacre and to avoid being suspected in the deaths of several of the men
believed responsible for the killing of the Moran gang. While in
Philadelphia, he and his trusted bodyguard Frankie Rio were picked up on
charges of carrying concealed weapons and were sentenced to a year in
prison. They eventually ended up in the Eastern Penitentiary.

Capone continued to
conduct business from prison. He was given a private cell and allowed to
make long-distance telephone calls from the warden’s office and to meet
with his lawyers and with Frank Nitti, Jack Guzik and his brother, Ralph,
all of whom made frequent trips to Philadelphia. An article in the
Philadelphia Public Ledger for August 20, 1929, described Capone's cell:
"The whole room was suffused in the glow of a desk lamp which stood on a
polished desk.... On the once-grim walls of the penal chamber hung
tasteful paintings, and the strains of a waltz were being emitted by a
powerful cabinet radio receiver of handsome design and fine finish..." The
place was obviously unlike the cells that were being used by other
prisoners of the time! He was released two months early on good behavior
and when he returned to Chicago, he found himself branded Public Enemy
Number One.

It was while he was
incarcerated in Pennsylvania that Capone first began to be haunted by the
ghost of James Clark, one of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre victims and
the brother-in-law of his rival Bugs Moran. While in prison, other inmates
reported that they could hear Capone screaming in his cell begging "Jimmy"
to go away and leave him alone. After his release, while living back in
Chicago at the Lexington Hotel, there were many times when his men would
hear from begging for the ghost to leave him in peace. On several
occasions, bodyguards broke into his rooms, fearing that someone had
gotten to their boss. Capone would then tell them of Clark’s ghost. Did
Capone imagine the whole thing, or was he already showing signs of the
psychosis that would haunt him after his release from Alcatraz prison?

Al Capone’s unflattering 1929
mugshot when he was arrested on weapons chargers in Philadelphia.

A reproduction of Capone’s Cell at Eastern State. These were obviously
much finer accommodations than those offered to the average inmate in the
prison.

Whether the ghost was real or not, Capone certainly
believed that he was. The crime boss even went so far as to contact a psychic
named Alice Britt to get rid of Clark’s angry spirit. Not long after a séance
was conducted to try and rid Capone of the vengeful spirit, Hymie Cornish,
Capone’s personal valet also believed that he saw the ghost. He entered the
lounge of Capone’s apartment and spotted a tall man standing near the window.
Whoever the man was, he simply vanished. Years later, Capone would state that
Clark’s vengeful specter followed him from the Eastern State Penitentiary --
to the grave.

Eastern State underwent sweeping reforms in 1913 after the
structure overflowed with a population of 1,700. But despite the renovations
that followed, talk began to circulate in the 1960’s about closing the place
down. By this time, it was in terrible shape and the only way to keep it in
operation was to renovate it again. The buildings were still overcrowded and
walls had crumbled in some locations and in others, ceilings were starting to
collapse. The cost of repairing the prison was nearly as high as building a
new one. By 1970, Pennsylvania Governor Shafer announced that four new prisons
would be built to replace Eastern State. Most of the men from Eastern State
would be transferred to Graterford Prison, which would be located about 25
miles from Philadelphia. Construction began immediately on this institution to
help relieve the overcrowding and the concern about the conditions at the old
prison. As Graterford was completed in 1971, prisoners began to be sent there.
On April 14, 1971, Eastern State was completely empty. The last of the men
were transferred out and the prison was shut down until a short time later,
when it became the Center City Detention Center.

Prison riots at the New Jersey State Prison at Trenton
later that year forced Eastern State to open its doors once again. Because of
the overcrowding and the riots at the New Jersey prison, a number of the
inmates had to be relocated. Eastern State was the closest available facility
and they were temporarily moved here. The place operated with a skeleton crew
for eight months and then was shut down again.

Once more, the prison stood empty and silent.

3. Ghosts of Eastern State
PenitentiaryWhispers and rumors of ghosts had echoed from the prison walls
for many years before the penitentiary was actually closed down. By the time
the building’s last living prisoners were removed though, anyone who had spent
any time in the place were certain that something supernatural was taking
place at Eastern State. It has been said that when the last guards made their
rounds through the prison, this last foray into the darkness caused them to
utter chilling stories to one another -- and to anyone else who would listen
and not think them insane. They spoke of the sounds of footsteps in the
corridors, pacing feet in the cells, eerie wails that drifted from the darkest
corners of the complex and dark shadows that resembled people flitting past
now darkened doorways and past windows and cells. It seemed that the abandoned
halls, corridors and chambers were not so empty after all! Those who left the
penitentiary on that final day had become convinced that a strange presence
had taken over the building and most breathed a sigh of relief to be gone.

But if ghosts lingered in
the building, they would soon be sharing the place with a handful of those
from among the living. In the middle 1970’s, the empty prison was
designated as a National Historic Landmark and was eventually purchased by
the city of Philadelphia to be used as a tourist attraction. The
Pennsylvania Prison Society of Philadelphia was placed in charge of
operating and promoting it as a historic site and they continue to conduct
tours of the penitentiary today.

And from these tours and
forays into the prison, came more the tales of ghosts and hauntings.
Without question, the prison was designed to be a frightening place and in
recent times, it has become even more so. The prison still stands as a
ruin of crumbling cellblocks, empty guard towers, rusting doors and
vaulted, water-stained ceilings. It is a veritable fortress and an
intimidating place for even the most hardened visitors. But does the
spooky atmosphere of the place explain the ghostly tales as merely tricks
of the imagination? Those who have experienced the spirits of Eastern
State say that it does not!

"The idea of staying in
this penitentiary alone is just overwhelming... I would not stay here
overnight," stated Greta Galuszka, a program coordinator for the prison.

Over the years, volunteers and visitors alike have had some
pretty strange experiences in the prison. In Cell Block 12, several
independent witnesses have reported the hollow and distant sound of laughter
echoing in certain cells. No source can ever be discovered for the noises.
Others have reported the presence of shadowy apparitions in the cells and the
hallways, as though prisoners from the past can find no escape from this
inhuman place. Several volunteers believe that they have seen these ghostly
figures in the "six block", while others have seen them darting across
corridors and vanishing into rooms. Eastern State’s Death Row has also been
the scene of strange encounters and chilling visitations by the same shadowy
figures encountered by others.

A locksmith named Gary Johnson was performing some routine
restoration work one day when he had his own odd encounter. "I had this
feeling that I was being watched," he recalled, "but I turned and I’m looking
down the block and there’s nobody there. A couple of seconds later and I get
the same feeling... I’m really being watched! I turn around and I look down
the block and shoooom.... this black shadow just leaped across the block!"
Johnson still refers to the prison as a "giant haunted house."

Angel Riugra, who has also worked in the prison, agrees.
"You feel kinda jittery walking around because you feel something there, but
when you turn around, you don’t see anything," he said. "It’s kinda weird,
it’s spooky!"

One of the most commonly reported specters in the prison is
encountered by staff members and visitors alike among the older cellblocks.
The phantom is always described as being a dark, human-like figure who stands
very still and quiet. The figure usually goes unnoticed until the visitor gets
too close to him and he darts away. The sightings never last for long but each
person who has encountered the apparition state that it gives off a feeling of
anger and malevolence. Could this be a prisoner who has remained behind in
protest of the inhumane treatment that he and so many others received in this
cruel and brutal place? Perhaps -- and it’s likely that this single spirit
does not walk here alone.

Another of the
penitentiary’s most frequently seen spirits is a ghost that stands high
above the prison walls in a guard tower. It has been assumed for many
years that this is a the spirit of a former guard who is still standing
his post after all of these years. One has to wonder why a guard, who was
free to leave this place at the end of the day, would choose to remain
behind at the prison. But perhaps he has no choice -- we can only
speculate as to what dark deeds this lonesome man may have been witness
to, or perhaps had taken part in, during his years at the prison. Maybe he
is now compelled to spend eternity watching over the walls that held so
many prisoner in days gone by.

As intimidating as all of
this sounds though, it is the history and the hauntings of the prison that
continue to bring people back. Many of the staff members, while unsettled
by the strange events that sometimes occur, are nevertheless fiercely
protective of the place and are determined to see that it is around for
many years to come. Even so, they can’t help but feel that forces are at
work inside of the prison.

"So much did happen here,"
Greta Galuszka added, "that there’s the potential for a lot of unfinished
business to be hanging around. And I think that’s my fear --- to stumble
upon some of that unfinished business."

The haunted guard
tower at the prison is said to boast the specter of a former guard and it
was also the scene of some strange activity on the night of the
“Mysterious Worlds” filming in June 2003.

4. FILMING WITH THE LEARNING CHANNEL
In June 2003, I had the opportunity to spend the night at
Eastern State Penitentiary with a crew from Digital Reality Television, who
was producing a series for The Learning Channel called “Mysterious Worlds”.
The episode that I have been involved with, called "America's Ghost Hunters",
deals with ghosts and hauntings and premiered October 30, 2003. I was
first contacted about the show by producer Michael Brockhoff. He explained
that the premise of the episode was to bring together researchers and groups
who specialized in various aspects of paranormal investigation. Each of them
would be filmed separately and then we would be brought together for the final
segment of the show in one haunted location. After much discussion, I
mentioned Eastern State Penitentiary to him as a possible site for the last
segment. The prison had a history of hauntings and the officials there would
be open to the idea of us spending an entire night there and also with the
mention of ghost in relation to the buildings. I would later find out that
even their own public tours make mention of the possibility of spectral
prisoners still lingering behind.

I met with Michael Brockhoff, and producer Steve Rice, when
they came to Alton, Illinois to film the first segment that I did with them.
My “specialty” for the show was “historical research” , meaning that I looked
for independent sightings or encounters with spirits from a single location. I
had already documented such activity in Alton at the First Unitarian Church
and had a number of witnesses who had reported a haunting without realizing
that others were experiencing the same thing. We spent an entire day filming
at the church and at our bookstore and made plans for the upcoming trip to
Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, other members of what would be the final team
were also filming segments in various parts of the country. Each of them would
film an investigation using their “specialty” for a separate segment and then
each would be put to use at Eastern State. The teams included Tonya Hacker and
Tammy Wilson from Oklahoma, who were working with EVP; a group called Seven
Paranormal Research from North Carolina, who had trained a dog to be able to
pick up anomalous energy fields in a haunting; and investigators from the
AGHOST group in Seattle, who had put together a computer system with a
multi-sensor array to measure several energy fields at once. Although I had
corresponded with several of these investigators in the past, I would be
meeting them for the first time in Philadelphia.

On June 6, 2003, I flew into Philadelphia and met with
Michael and Steve at the hotel. I spent that first evening seeing a little of
the city and tracking down the best Philly cheesesteaks in town (Pats!). The
following morning, I spent several hours working on sit-down interviews with
the cast and crew and then went to the prison to check out the layout of the
place during the daylight hours. After walking around for a couple of hours, I
met with some of the staff members and one of them was kind enough to take me
on a tour of areas of the prison that are not open to the public. I would
later have access to these same spots during out shoot but would find that
they looked totally different after darkness had fallen. It was a very wet and
gloomy weekend in the city and the prison seemed especially eerie with an
overcast sky and the constant dripping of water in places where the buildings
had fallen into ruin. I photographed a good portion of the place before
leaving for the afternoon.

The rest of the day was spent checking out local bookstores
and historic sites and then after dinner, I returned to my hotel for some
rest. I had a long night ahead of me and this would be my last chance to sleep
for about 36 hours.

Later that night, the entire group of investigators
returned to the prison (or came there for the first time) to get set up for
the night ahead. Members of the crew had already arrived and had set up a
“safe area” for equipment storage, food and coffee, just off the rotunda at
the center of the prison. Here, we became acclimated with maps of the prison
and instructions on what we would be doing for the night ahead. Michael
Brockhoff had asked me to coordinate everyone as much as possible and had
assigned me a couple of tasks for the night. In addition to photographing the
prison as thoroughly as possible, he also wanted me to supervise the
investigations and to rotate among the different groups as much as I could.
This would give me an opportunity to not only explore the prison but to
perhaps see what sort of activity the various groups and individuals might be
picking up.

The prison’s death row has long been the site of paranormal reports and it
would remain active during our overnight stay in the penitentiary.

Ross Allison and Dutch Jackson from AGHOST (center of photo) found strange
activity with the camera crew while on Death Row

To start with though, I
was supposed to take everyone on a historical tour through the prison and
to explain what was located where and when it was all used. I had pretty
thoroughly researched the site and had been filling in my information
after I had arrived so, accompanied by the researchers and a camera and
sound crew, we covered a large portion of the penitentiary. After that, we
were ready to begin our investigations.

Split up into different
groups, everyone went their separate directions and started setting up for
the night. My job was to “float” between then as much as possible but this
was not an easy job since oftentimes, the various experiments that were
being conducted had to be run without any interference. This was notably
the case with the EVP recordings that were being done by Tonya Hacker and
Tammy Wilson. I went to speak with them as they were setting up and we
discussed their methods for finding legitimate recordings. Both of them
were using external microphones that night (so as to avoid sounds from the
recorder itself) and were willing to admit that it was going to be tough
to try and set up units to record without them being monitored at all
times. Between the researchers and the crew, there were quite a few people
moving around inside of the buildings and so voices on the tapes might not
necessarily be ghostly, they realized. They finally decided to try
“interactive recording”, meaning that they would ask questions on tape and
then pause for replies, hoping that they might get more answers that way
than with simply leaving the recorders set up in different parts of the
prison. The evening would prove to be interesting for them and while both
told me the following morning that the results of their recordings were
“inconclusive” without further study, they did feel that they had captured
some fairly mysterious sounds on tape, including voices that came from
otherwise empty parts of the building.

A couple of sections of the prison seemed to be more active
than others that night and one of them was the central guard tower, which
traditionally had long been haunted by a spectral guard from years before. I
returned to the guard tower several times throughout the evening and spent one
prolonged period there of about an hour. I did not experience anything unusual
but members of the Seven Paranormal Research team, including Jim Hall,
certainly did. While exploring the area, their trained dog detected a very
strong presence -- one that was verified by more than one electromagnetic
field meter. I can vouch for the fact that there were no artificial fields in
the tower that night, so what the dog may have been sensing is unknown. I
asked Jim and Kady Harrington how exactly the dog was able to assist them with
their investigations and they explained what turned out to be a fairly simple
method to me. They began bringing the to their investigations and he began to
react in an erratic manner while in the presence of electromagnetic fields
that could be verified with equipment. Eventually, he began to lead the
investigators to these fields and has been doing so ever since. I asked them
if the dog could simply be behaving in a away that would earn him a reward and
they told me that they had considered this and so they never reward him for
his work. In that way, they do not get any false reactions from him. He
certainly seemed to know what he was doing that night. I had the chance to
observe him a couple of times and despite a number of things that might have
set off a less focused animal, the only time that he ever reacted in the way
that he did in investigation situations was in the guard tower. Interestingly,
the equipment also picked up readings here and one of their teams members
reported the uncomfortable presence of a man on the stairs.

Aside from the guard tower, the most active location that
we experienced and investigated that night was for the former “Death Row”
section of the prison. To be honest, this section was only somewhat accurately
named. It was used as an incarceration unit for Pennsylvania prisoners who had
been sentenced to death but no executions were actually carried out here. This
cell block was the last addition made to the prison and it was completed in
1959 and became the only block in the prison with electronic doors. The lower
level was used to house dangerous prisoners, who were placed here as
punishment, and the upstairs held those sentenced to death. When their
execution dates came about, the prisoners were then transferred to the State
Correctional Institution at Rockville for their date with “Old Sparky”.
Because the prisoners in the lower level of the block were so dangerous, a
separate row of bars was installed down the center of the corridor. The guards
were supposed to walk behind the second section so that they would be out of
reach of the inmates, but one of the staff members here told me that they
rarely do this because it showed weakness to the prisoners. This was the
section of the prison that held the worst of the worst -- and so it was no
surprise to me to learn that there had been a number of paranormals happenings
reported here over the years.

Because most of this building is not open to the general
public, most of the reports of unidentified sounds, cold chills and voices
have been reported by staff members and paranormal investigators. According to
my friend Kriss Stevens, who is the paranormal consultant for the show, during
filming that was done by the MTV show “Fear”, a producer claimed to be pushed
down the stairs that go from the first level to the upper one. It was in the
upper cell block that Ross Allison and Dutch Jackson, from the AGHOST group in
Seattle, decided to place their electronic testing equipment at the beginning
of the night. The equipment used a laptop computer to measure any fluctuations
that might take place in the energy field of the building. Over a two hour
period, they picked up not only changes in the electromagnetic field but also
almost constant movement that was detected by motion detectors. At the time,
the entire block was sealed off and no one was inside. Even before they had
set up, tests of the equipment picked up moving and changing magnetic fields
--- where there was no electricity --- inside of several cells.

And as it turned out the
only paranormal encounter that I experienced for myself also occurred that
night in the Death Row cell block. I had no idea at the time that anything
out of the ordinary was occurring however. I would not discover this until
after I returned home and had the film in my cameras developed. Of all of
the eerie photos taken that night, only one of them remains unexplained.
It was number 12 on the roll and was taken merely as a documentation of
the location, using Kodak 800 ASA color film. There was no strap on the
camera and nothing in front of me that would have caused the anomaly to
appear. After the photo was developed, the negative and the print were
studied by author and spirit photography expert Dale Kaczmarek and two
independent photographers with no connection to the paranormal field. No
one could provide any explanation as to what the image in the photo might
be.

The unexplained photo taken by
Troy Taylor in the Death Row Block at Eastern State. There was nothing in
front of the camera at the time it was taken.

So, is the Eastern State Penitentiary haunted? In the end,
that must be up to the reader (and the viewer of the television show) to
decide but I have always been of the opinion that in locations where violent
and traumatic events take place, those events often leave an impression
behind. In no place, would this be more true that at Eastern State, a place
with a long, rich history of violence, bloodshed and terror. If the events of
the past really do create the hauntings of today -- Eastern State Penitentiary
is a very haunted place.